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She-Hulk episode 5.

It continues to be camper than a Scout Jamboree, and I’m here for it.

Titania is a fun pastiche of egotistical influencer morons. Also an interesting exploration of super human identity and that. The tailor is also fun.

Perhaps not for everyone, but I’m loving it. Nice to see the MCU explored by someone with obvious powers who isn’t particularly interested in that life.

Not post credit sting this week. But there is an Easter egg. And not a subtle one at all.

 AduroT wrote:
I did laugh when they introduced the screaming goats. I had stopped laughing at them well before they made their final appearance. Hopefully with no more Taika we also get no more Korg.

T:L&T's good bit's are few, and the goats are near the bottom of the list. I hated them the moment they appeared (and the screaming goat meme passed me by, whenever it was). They should've been blown apart in a bloody mess on appearance.

Speaking of blood - on second watching it was brought home, with all the gold blood flying around on the stage at Omnipotent City, what a murderous slaughter the 'heroes' enacted on the guards in that scene. (Have we seen any Asgardian blood before now?)

She-Hulk: enjoying the series so far - looking forward to today's new episode.

MarkNorfolk wrote:


Speaking of blood - on second watching it was brought home, with all the gold blood flying around on the stage at Omnipotent City, what a murderous slaughter the 'heroes' enacted on the guards in that scene.

Were the guards not just automatons like we know them from the Greek myths, ones made my the Hephaestus?

Automatons who swoon over naked Thor?

 AduroT wrote:
Automatons who swoon over naked Thor?

I remember (although it was a long ago since I read any myths) that the best automatons were made to think and feel like men.

I didn't like the goats at first, but the running gag wore me down and I kind of low key loved them by the end.

Taika is a great director, but I'm not sure he is good at super hero films.
Ragnarok did course correct Thor, but it also reset his entire Arc from thr first movies. How many times does he have to discover himself?
But his other movies, Wildermen and Jojo rabbit.
But even those movies you can see they have character that have alot of his quirks and talk like Korg

I liked Our Flag Means Death and do look forward to another season of that.

Man I was really getting into this week's She-Hulk, right up until the points where the episode suddenly ended mid-scene.

Jesus D+ get your episode length/pacing issues into order...

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
The screaming goat meme is 14 years old. Why Taika thought it would be funny now, or, more importantly, funny when repeated 16 times, is beyond me...

Then again he also seemed to take the wrong lessons from James Gunn when it comes to including music in action sequences.

The meme is so old that it is fresh again. My sons wasn’t even born back then, and my wife and I didn’t roll our eyes thinking “that old joke” any more than we would when Looney Tunes or Scooby Doo reused an old Marx Brothers gag. Hey were supposed to be annoying—that was what made them funny. The first scream is funny, then they get annoying, then the gag keeps coming back until it’s even funnier.

Sounds like you didn’t want the Thor movie to be a comedy, and wouldn’t engage it as one. And comedies are subjective anyway. I don’t find most British comedy to be funny at all. That’s fine. Doesn’t make them objectively bad. As we know, you keep asking who these Marvel projects are for—clearly not you. That’s fine. They’re not objectively bad because they aren’t for you.

And Waititi’s use of music was fine. Maybe not as inspired as Gunn’s, but in no way did it ruin the movie.

I feel like She-Hulk keeps getting stupider and more stupider. For a show that is supposed to be empowering it seems to love tearing Jen down.

The goats were funny the first time. Comedy works in threes. Not in three-hundreds.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Sounds like you didn’t want the Thor movie to be a comedy, and wouldn’t engage it as one.

Don't try that on. It's an absurd statement. Ragnarok, which has massive problems with bathos thanks to fething Korg, was 10x funnier than Love & Thunder.

Love & Thunder was stupid. It turned the main character into a bumbling oaf who forgot over a decade's worth of character development. It was insultingly bad. And that's what you get for trusting - to quote James Gunn - unprepared directors.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
And Waititi’s use of music was fine. Maybe not as inspired as Gunn’s, but in no way did it ruin the movie.

I didn't say I ruined the movie. What I said was he took the wrong lessons from Gunn's use of music. Gunn's use of music has thematic resonance with the characters or situation, or is specifically tied to a character (like Quill's Mix Tapes). Taika even did this correctly in Ragnarok, using Immigrant Song, which has that thematic resonance with Thor/Norse Mythology.

Conversely, in Dumb & Dumber, Taika has taken the music that punctuates Guardians movies, but just overlaid 4 GnR songs over various action scenes because... because! They have no relevancy to the plot or themes (with maybe the exception of Sweet Child O' Mine, and even that's a stretch) and are just there because Taika is seemingly obsessed with the 80's.

And everything I just said is incredibly minor next to the colossal yawning void of unfunny that is Korg. feth me dead that character is worse than Jar Jar and Jake Lloyd Anakin Solo and Alfrid from the last two Hobbit movies combined. There's a reason why I've been calling him the Greater Daemon of Bathos ever since Ragnarok came out. He damn near ruined that movie, and he would. Not. Shut. Up. In this film. Even when they finally fething killed him he still didn't actually die!

 bbb wrote:
I feel like She-Hulk keeps getting stupider and more stupider. For a show that is supposed to be empowering it seems to love tearing Jen down.

I disagree. I think the show is hilarious. And while people AROUND Jen keep trying to tear her down, SHE keeps becoming more sure of herself and feeling more comfortable in both her skin as Jen and her skin as She-Hulk as she reconciles that they are one in the same. That has been the ark for her this entire time. And I would bet money that that is where it ends.

Very lightweight She Hulk this week, Titania needs to be a bit more nasty smart rather the easily mocked influenza parody

The suit guy needed more Edna from the Incredibles and less Hollywood from Mannaquin, and shame on Matt for not shopping local

The Edna vibe was strong with the scenes leading up to the superhero fashion guy - it was understandable they didn't do it, and Jennifer's push back against her She-Hulk identity meant we didn't get a "no capes" moment.

Titania did seem like a low threat, very different from the vicious bully persona I remember from just after her creation in the first Secret Wars.

I guess from next week we'll start seeing Jen more overtly embrace her She-Hulk side.

I appreciate the meta joke of the episode. She-Hulk literally exists to prevent CBS from cutting Marvel out of the successful 70's Hulk show by trademarking She-Hulk as had been done with the Bionic Woman. Outside of that though it was a pretty chill episode. Nice story progression, but not as memorably fantastic as last week.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
The goats were funny the first time. Comedy works in threes. Not in three-hundreds.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Sounds like you didn’t want the Thor movie to be a comedy, and wouldn’t engage it as one.

Don't try that on. It's an absurd statement. Ragnarok, which has massive problems with bathos thanks to fething Korg, was 10x funnier than Love & Thunder.

Love & Thunder was stupid. It turned the main character into a bumbling oaf who forgot over a decade's worth of character development. It was insultingly bad. And that's what you get for trusting - to quote James Gunn - unprepared directors.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
And Waititi’s use of music was fine. Maybe not as inspired as Gunn’s, but in no way did it ruin the movie.

I didn't say I ruined the movie. What I said was he took the wrong lessons from Gunn's use of music. Gunn's use of music has thematic resonance with the characters or situation, or is specifically tied to a character (like Quill's Mix Tapes). Taika even did this correctly in Ragnarok, using Immigrant Song, which has that thematic resonance with Thor/Norse Mythology.

Conversely, in Dumb & Dumber, Taika has taken the music that punctuates Guardians movies, but just overlaid 4 GnR songs over various action scenes because... because! They have no relevancy to the plot or themes (with maybe the exception of Sweet Child O' Mine, and even that's a stretch) and are just there because Taika is seemingly obsessed with the 80's.

And everything I just said is incredibly minor next to the colossal yawning void of unfunny that is Korg. feth me dead that character is worse than Jar Jar and Jake Lloyd Anakin Solo and Alfrid from the last two Hobbit movies combined. There's a reason why I've been calling him the Greater Daemon of Bathos ever since Ragnarok came out. He damn near ruined that movie, and he would. Not. Shut. Up. In this film. Even when they finally fething killed him he still didn't actually die!

Sounds like we agree on the music and Korg, at least to some extent.

I disagree on Thor. He was always an oaf, and his character was mostly backslid in Endgame. If anything, his vainly grasping for growth makes him feel too realistic a person.

I think the main reason Thor's character feels off is just the way his conflict is introduced. The premise of him being afraid of attachment is a great starting point, but its revealed through his time with the Guardians without ever really getting to see it in his time with the Guardians. We really needed the montage rather than the action scene we got that would let us see Thor not really being part of the team. Maybe get frustrated with Mantis pestering him for being sad? Instead we get Star Lord basically explaining the character to himself before they take off in some intentionally cringey humor that doesn't really land.

There's also this weird insistence that Taika has of ditching any character he has no interest with to the point of being blatantly disrespectful to the fans and the actors.

Think of what he did to The Warriors 3. Imagine what would have happened if Jamie Alexander hadn't have been busy due to filming Blindspot. Sif would've likely died in that film as well. It's a miracle she survived Dumb & Dumber at all.

Then look at the Guardians in that movie. You've got a great set up from Infinity War/Endgame for the 'Asguardians of the Galaxy', some real chemistry between Quill/Thor and especially Rocket/Thor, yet Taika ejects them from the narrative as fast as humanly possible.

Now I never expected the Guardians to be a big part of a Thor movie - it's a Thor movie after all - but they were scarcely in the opening prologue, outside of Quill had maybe a line each, and the relationships built in the previous movies were jettisoned quicker than you can pour a beer over an inanimate object. Dave Bautista has raised concerns about the treatment of Drax in other non-Guardians movies, so I wonder how he felt about spending all that time in make-up to have a single line and just be in the background of two scenes?

Good thing there are other Guardian movies coming, otherwise Taika might've killed them off too!

I liked Thor 4, I think Dad Thor is a good evolution of the character and even laughed at the goats.

She Hulk 1.5 did nothing for me, it was cute.

 bbb wrote:
I feel like She-Hulk keeps getting stupider and more stupider. For a show that is supposed to be empowering it seems to love tearing Jen down.

That... that's the arc. That's the show. Jen is losing everything she values about herself to the She-Hulk persona, which she didn't ask for and doesn't want.
She wants to prove herself in the career that she spent her adult life building, and she lost it all to a quirk of happenstance, and now everything revolves around this new identity. She wants to be recognized for herself, and everyone else only sees green.
She lost her career in the DA's office, she only gets supers related cases, even her dating life guys actively reject Jen for She-Hulk. Tearing 'Jen' down as a person is the point, until she finds a way to come to terms with it all.

Its why she doesn't have the same problems Bruce had with the Hulk. Being good at Hulk things doesn't matter to Jen, she thinks its all unearned and pointless. Being successful as She-Hulk hurts her more than anything else in the world, because it renders all her real accomplishments (school, debt, DA office, career) pointless and moot.

She-Hulk is a weird show for me, It's fun and I'm enjoying the individual episodes, but it lacks any real substance. I get the themes they're going for, but the last episode was far too blunt with how they were presented, especially in the scene in the bar towards the end.

I'm wondering if they're going to attempt anything approaching a regular story arc or if it's all just going to be character development. They hinted at a wider arc with the Wrecking Crew but they seem to have been forgotten for now. It feels like the show might just end up meandering to something approaching a conclusion, but equally might just sort of peter out.

It's a difficult thing to read, as we don't know the running time for the individual episodes, we really can only speculate where we are in the arc. It might be that the last handful of episodes are 45mins plus (so about 1h 15 after credits and recaps) and there's a lot of story left to tell.

I'm just grateful that all these shows mean the number of movies we have to sit through that are all variations of "introduce character, give character their powers/macguffin, watch character struggle with their new abilities before triumphing over whichever villain has been chosen to be sacrificed on the altar of episode 1" are massively fewer than there'd otherwise need to be.

She just got her super hero suit at the end of this last episode along with a affirmation in her legal battle that she IS She-Hulk. She IS operating with that name and persona.

So, I suspect the rest of the show (4 more episodes) is going to start to explore that super hero life.

Remember, the trailers show her in her super hero suit on a bridge doing some kind of super hero thing when Daredevil shows up. AND that includes a conversation with Matt in a bar. "Jen can help people when society fails them. And She Hulk can help them when the law fails them."

My problem with She Hulk is came to terms with being a Hulk in the first episode.

And came to terms with being She Hulk and a lawyer in the second.

And came to terms with dating as She Hulk in the 3rd.

While it subverted expectations a bit by never going through a Savage She Hulk phase it just seems to be the same revelation that she's a well adjusted person with a a bit of angst.

Now maybe that's where this is going and the first season will end with the façade cracking and Jen going full Hulk Smash. But for now... it's cute. Sometimes.

I disagree. It’s all still been by degrees.

First episode? So, You’re a Hulk. She accepts the condition she’s now living with.

The rest is her discovering the perks (no more fear of walking alone in the dark, suddenly desirable to certain men she happens to be at least superficially attracted to), and then The Perils Of Fame/Infamy.

She never really ACCEPTED it. The first episode is her being told she is now a hulk and what that means for her. "You can never go back to your old life".

She is determined to prove that wrong. And ends up getting fired and rehired with a new job that focuses on her She-Hulk self. In the first episode She-Hulk was something that she could leave in a box and ignore. The second episode made her put it front and center in order to keep doing her job.

She has spent the entire show running from the fact that she is She Hulk and only reluctantly changing into it when 1) she needed it (wrecking crew/muggers) or 2) she was pressured to (Job/Titania/Dating App with Nikki).

She has yet to actually reconcile the idea that her life is actually different. She still thinks she can just be Jen Walters - Lawyer. And I think the show is going to conclude with some actual super heroic threat where she really steps into what being She Hulk means instead of just a thing she tries to mostly ignore.

I mean. The while point is eventually she will come to realize her and she-hulk are one in the same, same person.
She is hitting snags to realize it, the dating was a big blow because she was the same person, just looked different.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
I mean. The while point is eventually she will come to realize her and she-hulk are one in the same, same person.
She is hitting snags to realize it, the dating was a big blow because she was the same person, just looked different.

Except she says it the first episode!

The scene where Banner is training her and she starts listing all the things that upset her and turning green. Banner things she's about to lose control but she says she's doing it on purpose.

It's like there's no major conflict, Jen would kinda sorta prefer not to be She Hulk but doesn't really mind that much. It's like being the Eagles and not really wanting to play Hotel California every concert but knowing you kinda have to oh well.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
I mean. The while point is eventually she will come to realize her and she-hulk are one in the same, same person.
She is hitting snags to realize it, the dating was a big blow because she was the same person, just looked different.

Except she says it the first episode!

The scene where Banner is training her and she starts listing all the things that upset her and turning green. Banner things she's about to lose control but she says she's doing it on purpose.

It's like there's no major conflict, Jen would kinda sorta prefer not to be She Hulk but doesn't really mind that much. It's like being the Eagles and not really wanting to play Hotel California every concert but knowing you kinda have to oh well.

There is a bit of a difference between being a band and playing your biggest song at every concert (still within the scope of the career and life you have chosen) and being a lawyer and having to use your new found, accidental super powers that everyone around you keeps harping on about to go punch bad guys in the streets (an entirely different scope well outside the life she had been building).